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"(Customers) say things they shouldn't have. It just wasn't nice," says Curtis West, who worked 19 Black Fridays over the course of his 24 years as an employee at Macy's. West doesn't work there anymore, but when he first started at the Macy's flagship store in New York City, Black Friday sales started at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Now, the store plans to open at midnight.

The post-Thanksgiving tradition is now starting sooner than ever -- almost competing with late holiday feasting on Thanksgiving Day. Toys R Us, Sears, Walmart and Target are all opening their doors between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Thursday evening.

Store employees have to show up even earlier to prepare for the retail rush. Others have to lose sleep as they work long, hectic overnight shifts at stores that remain open all hours of the night.

Macy's spokesman Jim Sluzewski said that Macy's waits until after Thanksgiving to open so that associates can spend the day with family. He said that the store asks for volunteers to staff the overnight shift and it gets a good response.

But according to West, working on Black Friday wasn't much of a choice. That's because Macy's only pays workers for time off on Thanksgiving if they work both the day before and the day after the holiday, he said.

For West, the pressure came from both ends.

At home, his family was upset with him for spending less time during the holiday with them.
At work, the mile-long lines of shoppers, the opening of Santa Land and the mad dash for limited quantities of deeply discounted items soon devolved into a nightmare for employees.
"It's a very stressful atmosphere for workers," he said. "Everyone's in a rush. They want the sale and then they want to get out of there and get to Kmart."

Seasonal job openings: 5,200

A staple of many shopping malls across the nation, the gourmet gift basket retailer relies heavily on holiday sales to add to its profits. A privately held company, Hickory Farms perennially hires as many as 6,000 seasonal workers to work at its stores, which it calls "Holiday Gift Centers." Though many jobs involve interacting with customers, the company also needs additional workers to fill stock and labor positions, which may include driving in some locations, it says.

Though it has no bricks-and-mortar stores to staff, Amazon.com Inc.'s seasonal hiring plans are nonetheless robust. It needs plenty of additional workers to help fill orders and keep products moving through its warehouses nationwide. The Seattle-based company, which is unveiling a new line of Kindle-brand electronic readers and tablets, also plans to add 2,000 new jobs at three new distribution centers to help deal with demand driven by the new devices.

The department store operator announced it September that it would ramp up holiday hiring by more than 10 percent from last year to support its business in stores and online. Wisconsin-based Kohl's Corp., which operates 1,134 stores in 49 states, plans to hire an average of 41 workers at each store, a 4 percent increase from last year. The company also expects to add about 5,700 seasonal positions at distribution centers and more than 30 seasonal credit operations jobs.

The former No. 1 seller of toys in the U.S., Toys R Us Inc. credits a gradually improving economy and an increase in consumer spending for its decision to hire 11 percent more seasonal workers than the 40,000 it did in 2011. Of those it hired last year, Toys R Us says roughly 15 percent of them were kept on after the holiday sales season ended.

The holidays are the busiest time of year for the world's largest retailer and the company plans to hire more than 50,000 temporary workers to help keep store shelves and move customers through checkout lines as the 2012 holiday season approaches. Walmart Stores Inc. also plans to give existing employees the chance to work more hours during the season, acknowledging complaints among some workers who said they weren't able to work as many hours as they would have liked.

Though far smaller than rival Walmart, the nation's No. 2 retailer nonetheless plans to hire plenty of holiday season workers in 2012. The Minnesota-based company plans to add 80,000 to 90,000 seasonal jobs, down a bit from the 92,000 it hired last year. Hiring forecasts are likely be held in check by Target's expectations of an "ultracompetitive" holiday sales season. Target Corp., along with Walmart, is keeping an eye on expenses, which of course includes labor costs, so as to lower prices and stimulate sales.

The king of all department stores, Cincinnati-based Macy's Inc. said it's hiring nearly 3 percent more seasonal staff than it did last year, in anticipation of higher holidays sales. Sales associates and call center employees are among the positions Macy's is looking to fill, which also include those in its distribution and fulfillment centers, to support the department store operator's growing online business.

Best Buy Co. plans to hire about 9,000 more seasonal workers as it did last year, though this year's number is still below the 29,000 it hired in 2010. In July, the world's largest consumer electronics chain cut 600 of its "Geek Squad" employees in response to weak sales. The boost in seasonal hiring is helping to contribute to what analysts say is the best year of seasonal-job creation that the U.S. has seen in five years.

Much like Best Buy, GameStop has seen its sales erode as more and more consumers turn to buying online. Faced with strong competitors such as Amazon, GameStop has nonetheless managed to hold its own in terms of sales and profits. As with most retailers, the Grapevine, Texas-based company derives much of its sales during the all-important holiday sales season -- and its more than 4,400 stores in the U.S. need more staff to help keep those cash registers ringing.

J.C. Penney Co. has struggled to remake its namesake JCPenney stores into a retail business that's more modern and less reliant on discounts to draw customers. And the coming holiday shopping season will be an important test of whether the signs of improvement that Plano, Texas-based company has lately been showing are real or not. Sales are expected to be tepid this holiday season, but at least one company representative says that won't affect the need for seasonal workers. "[It] looks like there will be another increase this year over last year's hiring," said, Bob Parker, a site manager for JCPenney in Sarasota, Fla., "probably by as much as 10 to 20 percent in some cases."

The fall is prime season for privately held Party City Holdings Inc., which is perhaps best known as a seller of Halloween costumes. But the retailer also sells party supplies and seasonal decorations, which result in a steady flow of customers this time of year. The Rockaway, N.J.-based company has 600 stores nationwide. In addition to its namesake Party City stores, it also operates The Paper Factory, Halloween City and Factory Card & Party Outlet shops.

It takes a lot more workers to help move the millions of boxes and packages Americans send to each other each holiday season. And though FedEx Corp. expects shipping volume will be up 13 percent, it's hiring about as many workers as it did last holiday season. The company says it can stick with the same number of seasonal workers as last year because it has been hiring staff throughout 2012.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based company, which is closely watched as an indicator of consumer demand and economic health, anticipates handling more than 280 million shipments during the holiday season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Competitor UPS added about 55,000 workers for the holidays last year, 10 percent more than it hired in 2010.

With expectations of delivering 527 million packages this holiday season, UPS Inc. is adding 55,000 workers to sort, load and deliver packages, the same number it hired last year, but 10 percent higher than in 2010. Based on the company's forecast, it appears those and full-time UPS workers will be busiest during the final week before the Christmas holiday. UPS says 28 million, or 5 percent of packages, will be delivered Thursday, Dec. 20 -- projected to be the busiest of the year.

"Doorbusters" make things more hectic. Customers get frustrated after waiting hours for deals that sell out even before they get in the store. And workers usually bear the brunt of customers' anger.

"When the store runs out of merchandise the day of advertising, no one understands why you don't have it," West said. "Normally, it's hard to get a manager to deal with the issue."

Black Friday traditionally marks the start of the holiday shopping season each year. Stores consider it the most important time of the year, because they can make up to 40 percent of their annual sales in the November-December period.

West isn't the only store employee upset about working Black Friday. Last week, more than 20 new petitions were created on Change.org calling on retailers to push back their opening times so that workers can spend Thanksgiving at home.

One of the petitions, started by Target employee Casey St. Clair, has nearly 170,000 supporters on the advocacy website. St. Clair is asking Target to "take the high road and save Thanksgiving for employees."

A Target spokesperson said the store's opening time was carefully evaluated. "Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest of the year, and we appreciate our Target team's flexibility on this weekend and throughout the holiday season," she said.

In the 22 hours after the group shared a photo of an angry cat on its Facebook page with the caption, " 'Like' if you think Thanksgiving should stay a day for family not working and shopping," the photo got over 1,100 likes, 240 "shares" and 100 comments.

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Hey Tyler

retail employees? America should be outraged over black friday, people pushing and shoving, people buying a 150.00 tent to save 50 bucks on a TV, people acting like mad animals all to get a deal....yeah people who do black friday show their true colors, sort of like the honey boo boo mentality.....

Out of 365 days a year there were 3 days where a retail employee could enjoy the day off with their family. Now there are only 2 .... Christmas and Easter. I guess some people think that 362 shopping days is simply not enough! :(

RETAIL WORKERS SHOULD EXPECT TO WORK ON BLACK FRIDAY. BY TAKING A RETAIL JOB, THE EMPLOYEE SIGNS UP FOR THAT. But, I can certainly understand them being upset about having to work Thanksgiving day, although Wal-Mart did not open till 8PM, so it at least gave them time to enjoy dinner and time with family. Attempting to unionize Wal-Mart are futile. There was one walMart in Canada that adopted a union. WM promptly closed the store permanently. WM also permanently banned the former workers of the store from being rehired. some companys are too big to be unionized. As for the WM workers protesting WM, I suspect they will be getting a pink slip pretty soon.

I worked at Walmart for two years and I have never been treated as poorly as I was there. I am hard worker and don't complain about working long hours or weekends but we were expected to the work of two or three people so that the managers could cut hours. Black Friday was the worst possible day of the year. The crowds were huge and posed a danger to the workers and the neighborhood around the store. We had workers run over and man-handled by shoppers. I realized that there are jobs that require people to work on holidays. These jobs usually deal with medical care or public safety. No one is going to die becuase they didn't get a big screen tv and it shameful when a full time worker with one child has to go on food stamps to make the ends meet. I agree that people should be grateful for a job but that does not mean the employer has right to treat them as less than human. Sam Walton said that family should come first yet Walmart tell its employee that Walmart should be the most important thing in lives.That being said it is important the customers remember that if they are going to shop Black Friday, then remember to be nice to workers. We are trying our best. We are tired and miss our families. We do not control the number sales items and we do not get special deals. We have to follow the same rules as everyone else. If you treat a worker with respect and kindness then that person is far more likely to go that extra mile to help you.Please do not assume that because we work retail that we are supid or lazy. I have a Masters degree in Education but I needed a job help pay bills. I was not too proud to work at Walmart. There are also people who enjoy helping others. I wished everyone had spend a year working retail in the type they shop in so that they would understand how the workers feel. I would ask everyone is who shopping this holiday to remember to treat the workers with the respect and kindness that they themselves would expect. I would also like to thank those people who selflessly give up their holidays to provide care and safety to the public. Happy Holidays.

i don't get it. won't the stores get 40% of their sales for the year whether they are open early, late, thanksgiving, the day after? if people need to buy that stuff, they will go get it whether the store opens at 4 in the morning or at 9 in the morning. if the store is closed thanksgiving day, go the next day and get your item? won't the stores make just as much? what is it that i am missing here?

I hate black friday. i didn't go anywhere near any of the sales and didn't even pick up a sale paper to look at the ads. People think they can act any way they want and because it's bf, we're supposed to over look their behavior??? idiots.

Black Friday shopping for just what Holidays? Muslim, Christian, Jewish, whatever? Since Christmas symbols are considered PC incorrect just why is this time for year considered a time of buying more stuff cheap, cheap? Just what is being celebrated? Greed? Like George Carlin used to talk about in his routines it's all about who dies with the best & the most stuff. Notice gov offices are closed for business -rather a bit hypocritical when they are the enforcers of the separation of church/religion & state…If people weren't so greedy then the big corps wouldn't bother with "BLACK FRIDAY" now would they?? If people are buying "Christmas" presents, the way they do is the very antithesis of what Jesus taught, isn't it?No, the Holidays are all about hedonistic plain old greed and herd mentality………